brave new world

English

Etymology

From the title of Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, itself a reference to a line from The Tempest (1610), see quotations.

Noun

brave new world (plural brave new worlds)

1. A better, often utopian (future) world.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 17:

     O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there heere? / How beauteous mankinde is? O braue new world / That has ſuch people in't.

   • 1999, Helen Kelly-Holmes, European Television Discourse in Transition‎^[1], →ISBN, page 6:

     Will digital broadcasting, 'mega-channel-land', change everything or nothing? Will it be a brave new world, or simply more of the same?

2. A terrible, often oppressive or dystopian world.
   • 2005, Will Watson, “The Ethics of Living American Primacy”, in Allan Eickelman et al., editors, Justice and Violence: Political Violence, Pacifism and Cultural Transformation‎^[2], →ISBN, page 103:

     In this brave new world, the IMF and other Western financial institutions dictated radical free trade "shock treatment" to both developing nations and the former USSR ...

Translations

ambitious, often utopian, vision of the future

• Danish: fagre nye verden c
• French: meilleur des mondes
• Greek: θαυμαστός καινούργιος κόσμος (thavmastós kainoúrgios kósmos)
• Hungarian: szép új világ
• Portuguese: admirável mundo novo m
• Russian: ди́вный но́вый ми́р m (dívnyj nóvyj mír)